Diamond Peak Circumnavigation

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Yay, Diamond Peak

Susan and I had originally planned on running Mt. Rainier's Northern Loop trail but according to recent trail reports there were still several miles of snow to cross. Which normally wouldn't scare me away but considering the distance ~37 miles and the new to us trails, I thought we should wait a few weeks before attempting it. But since we already had the day off of work I came up with several plan b options for us. One of them was a popular loop from Odell Lake to the east side of Diamond Peak. But after looking at my Diamond Peak map I noticed you could stitch several trails together and actually circumnavigate Diamond Peak

Crescent Lake


Knowing how much we love circumnavigations, I knew we had a plan b winner. I started Googling "Circumnavigating Diamond Peak" and I couldn't much. Then I started looking for information on Diamond Peak Trail #3699, which is the trail that runs along the west side of the mountain. But I could find very little on the trail and only 1 OregonHikers.com post from 5 years ago on running around Diamond Peak. I was a little skeptical that the trail was maintained or used. I called the ranger station and they said the trail was in decent shape and was in use. 


Diamond Peak

We decided to take our chances. We camped and started at the Vivian Lake trailhead, since Vivian Lake Trail #3662 connected to Diamond Peak Tie Trail #4239 after only 1/2 a mile and if the trail was crap we could turn around and head towards the PCT. Luckily the Diamond Peak Tie & Diamond Peak Tie trails were in decent condition, just a little over grown. There wasn't much in the way of views but there are quite a few alpine lake side trips you can make. We decided to skip the side trips to the lakes, because the mosquitoes were bad enough without the lakes. 

Three Sisters

After ~10 miles we took the Rockpile #3632 for a few miles to meet up with the PCT. The PCT runs the length of the east side of Diamond Peak. This is when we got our first real glance of Diamond Peak. We also were rewarded with views of the The Three Sisters, Mt. Theilsen, Crescent and Odell Lake. I was so happy we decided to do the loop this direction and got to end with the all the views. 


Diamond Peak


Right before we connected back to the Vivian Lake trail we passed Notch Lake, a cute alpine lake with an island in the middle of it. The route was ~24 miles and ~4000 feet of elevation gain (my strava route). The route didn't have the jaw dropping views every mile lake some of the other circumnavigations we have done, but it did have solitude (we saw 5 people) and very runnable trails. 

Notch Lake

This made our 7th mountain in the PNW to circumnavigate. 




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